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This was our 3rd Carnival Cruise. The ship is beautiful and laid out fairly well despite it's size, but waiting for any meals and elevators is all too common. The Gathering buffet on Lido Deck is too small for a ship this size. It seems about the same size as on the smaller Carnival Freedom, and not much bigger than on the much smaller Norwegian Jewel class ships. It often took 15 minutes to finally get through for any meal.
We did the yourtime dining for dinner and found it to be a very long wait to be seated each time. One night it took nearly 45 minutes. Carnival should take a cue from Norwegian, which does anytime dinning for everyone. They allow you to go to either of the two dinning rooms and the waits are never more than 5-10 minutes. Service once you are seated can also be slow. One night we waited nearly an hour for our main course.
I tried the pasta grill one day, and waited nearly an hour for one bowl.
I want to say that the wait staff are very competent and friendly. It seems they just don't have enough for a ship this size. Supervisors give you a lot of double talk and excuses that is very insulting. While the lower level staff is quite friendly and accomodating, middle and upper management treat guests like they are all children and don't know better.
If Carnival is going to keep building these enormous ships, they need to staff them adequately and make everything bigger to accomodate so many people. We also found the elevators very slow and inadequate. The should be more on a ship this size.
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